you a trophy. Hadn't it ever entered your silly
young noddles to see what she could do for your form? Well, you are a
set of slackers! That's my opinion of you. We manage our affairs better
in the Transition."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" gasped Little Flaxen, lingering a moment or
two behind the others. "You've been just great! I'll write to Dad
to-night to send me some chocs, and I won't eat a single one myself.
They shall have them all. They shall really!"

With scarlet cheeks and shining eyes she was a different child from the
weeping Niobe who had sat and sobbed on the steps.

"Now if I'd simply coddled her and sympathized she'd have cried a few
gallons more and have been no better off," mused Irene, as her protegee
danced away. "I fancy those juniors have been fairly nasty to her,
though I wouldn't tell her so. Something ought to be done about it, but
the question is 'what?' I want to have a talk with Peachy when I can
wedge in ten minutes of spare time."

All evening remembrance of Little Flaxen's red eyes and white cheeks
haunted Irene. She felt it ought not to have been possible for the child
to be so lonely and neglected. Granted that her unpopularity might be
partly her own fault, boycotting was nevertheless hard to bear. It was
clearly somebody's business to have looked after her, and that duty
ought not to have devolved upon a newcomer like herself, who only
realized the necessity by the merest chance.

"What's the use of the prefects?" Irene asked herself, but she gave up
the answer, and appealed to Peachy at breakfast-time instead.

That cheery young American took the matter more seriously than Irene
expected. There was a very kind little heart hidden under her bubbles of
fun.

"I'll call a meeting of the Camellia Buds right now," she declared. "I
guess we don't want any of those poor babes crying their eyes out. Talk
of homesickness! You should have seen me my first week here. I brought
four dozen pocket-handkerchiefs to school with me and I used them all.
It's not good enough! Prefects, did you say? Humph! I don't call Rachel
exactly laid out for this job. Bring your biscuits to the 'Grotto' at
interval, and we'll have a powwow about it."

There was a twenty-minute mid-morning break between classes, during
which the girls ate lunch and amused themselves as they pleased in the
house or grounds. The biscuits, three apiece, were laid out in rows on
the dining-room table together with each pupil's